Edmund White: Remembering a Doyen of LGBTQ+ Literature and His Mentorship

“If I write for you for free, that takes away time from the writing I need to do when someone pays me.”

This was among the earliest lessons taught to me by Edmund White, who died in June of this year, leaving behind his husband, writer Michael Carroll.

Over the decades, this grand doyen of LGBTQ+ literature, a member of the famed Violet Quill gay men’s writing group, would be a source of advice and support.

His amicable no was in response to my asking him to write an introduction to a book I was co-editing, the Gay Tourism: Culture, Identity and Sex (2002), the first academic book on the gay travel industry. He requested something like a thousand dollars, impossible in our budget where none of us were going to make much money at all.

The idea of being paid for academic writing remains an anathema. Even from a commercial perspective for gay or HIV publications, by the turn of the millennium, I had only written for free or paltry sums not worth labeling honorarium.

The conversation was thus a revelation, one I still remind myself of a quarter century later. What Edmund was making clear to me—which all writers should understand—was that he knew his fame meant many people wanted him in their projects, but that didn’t always mean they wanted to compensate him. If he said yes to everyone, he’d be broke.

In a nurturing, avuncular manner, he let me know I was far from the first to ask. Edmund’s no was a disappointment to myself and my co-editors, Dr. Stephen Clift and Carrie Callister, but I did get something out of it: advice that stayed with me about my worth as a writer.

Still, even with multiple books, it remains a struggle. Writing colleagues who do well economically remind me that exposure can’t pay bills. The inner voice must be “you want me to write for you, because I’m good, and that’s why you should give me the dignity of being paid.”

Edmund’s books were why I was collaborating with British researchers Dr. Clift and Ms. Callister, in a one-thing-leads-to-another way. I’d tackled A Boy’s Own Story, his 1982 autobiographical novel about a college man’s coming out as a 1980s Rutgers undergrad. In 1992, going back for my master’s, his 1980 travelogue States of Desire: Travels in Gay America screamed at me from the reading list for a tourism class I took with Dr. Bria Holcomb. She and I would present our own groundbreaking gay tourism research at the Institute of British Geographers conference in January 1995, publishing in the Annals of Tourism Research the following year.

It was this which Dr. Clift read, leading to an offer of a research position in 1998 in Canterbury, interviewing gay men who traveled about their sex lives. The experience added to the myriad anecdotes I was synthesizing into fiction from similar work for the Rutgers University Psychology Department. My boss there, Dr. Ann O’Leary, told me my reports were among the best narratives she’d ever read, bringing subjects to life beyond the usual dry academic text. I knew I was a writer, but I was not yet sure how to act on it.

I returned to New Jersey after my British research semester serious about my writing career. With a draft of my HIV research novel The Voyeur, I attended Outwrite, the queer writers conference in Boston. It was there—or possibly Behind Our Masks, both now defunct gatherings—where I finally met Edmund in person.

What I remember was how naughtily flirtatious he was, declaring himself a wholesome Midwesterner, while simultaneously dropping sultry comments about my long-lashed dark eyes as a window to the Italian-American soul. I was young, it was flattering. I’m a highly sensual person, maybe at my sexual peak back then. Still, I didn’t want to fall for it, I was after serious mentorship. He seemed to want another notch on his belt.

I worried, of course, that no one would respect me as a writer if I slept with him, and would see it as a shortcut to getting published. Looking back, maybe I wish I had. Edmund was not the first older gay writer to proposition me. Indeed, my views on the matter have long since changed. Now I tell young people, if sleeping with someone might help you get ahead, by all means, do it. If nothing else, you’ve got a lurid cocktail party story. Better yet, a book chapter.

And not sleeping with him didn’t matter. Edmund remained a strong, if solicitous, mentor. The year Gay Tourism came out, I visited Paris, and Edmund was generous with advice and contacts.

Here too, Edmund imparted writing advice about one’s worth, related to his 2000 book The Flâneur: A Stroll Through The Paradoxes of Paris. By then, he’d settled into his new apartment in Chelsea, partly made possible by the book. While he had a patrician aspect, I never had the impression Edmund was wealthy, only that he knew how to transform writing into a comfortable living in the world’s most important literary city, the apartment tangible proof. With our conversation touching on kitchen cabinets, he’d gone from adventurer to homemaker.

The Flâneur is a sui generis example of an untraditional travel book, allowing readers to go deep into history and atmosphere, while providing useful information for exploring Paris. For nearly twenty years, I have used it in my own writing classes for its nuanced mix of history, memoir and advice. Edmund is particularly exquisite in bringing to life the layered history of a location, transporting readers through the eyes of the famous who might have stared at the same monument. He will then snap you back from your temporal trance to inform you, guidebook style, of the site’s entry costs and hours; a perfect companion for navigating the living museum that is today’s City of Light.

His advice on knowing the value of your work continues to peck at me. The dilemma I find as a teacher is that students need published writing samples to show potential editors—but how do you get them without being exploited, doing that work for free? It’s simultaneously a necessity to build the chrysalis transforming you into a professional writer, and a luxury, when you must fight for attention. I don’t think anyone has solved this conundrum. Artificial Intelligence will only make this worse.

At 56, it’s strange looking back and realizing I am roughly the same age as Edmund was when I met him, and how over the decades, his friendship became intertwined with my writing career, literary events keeping us connected. One year Edmund introduced me to English Patient author Michael Ondaatje when they were both speaking at the New York Public Library.

It was the same with other authors—including Felice Picano—who also died this year. Another fatherly figure who helped in tangible and intangible ways, including letting me stay in his West Hollywood home.

Now, whether as an instructor or informally, I mentor young people navigating a vastly transformed publishing landscape. Will I have the same impact as Edmund and these other men? Moreover, will I be remembered decades from now at the twilight of my own life?

Rest in Peace, Edmund. I’m sure you’re being naughtily flirtatious up in heaven. And thanks for all you did over the years. Mentoring others, perhaps not as flirtatiously, is the best way to honor your legacy.